We went down hard. Chest shots! Hurt like hell! Took my breath away. Fortunately, we were wearing Kevlar vests.

The man in his underwear wasn’t.

Mahoney’s return fire took out a kneecap; my first shot struck his thick stomach. He went down, spurting blood and howling.

We ran to the side of Andrei Prokopev. Mahoney kicked away his gun. “You’re under arrest!” Ned yelled into the face of the wounded Russian. “We know who you are.”

A helicopter appeared between the Century’s towers. A woman was screaming from one of the windows several stories above us. Now the helicopter was landing! What the hell was this?

A man came out of a window in the tower and dropped to the roof.

Then another man. Professional gunmen, it looked like. Bodyguards?

They were quick on the draw and began shooting the instant they hit the roof. HRT returned fire. Several shots were exchanged. Both gunmen were hit and went down. Neither got up again. HRT was that good.

The helicopter was setting down on the roof. It wasn’t media or police. It was there to get the Wolf and whisk him away, wasn’t it? There were shots from the helicopter. Mahoney and I fired into the cockpit. There was another rapid exchange of gunfire. Then the shooting from the helicopter stopped.

For several seconds the only sound on the roof was the loud, eerie whir of the helicopter’s rotor blades. “Clear!” one of our agents finally yelled. “They’re down in the copter!”

“You’re under arrest!” Mahoney screamed at the Russian in his underwear. “You’re the Wolf. You attacked the director’s house, his family!”

I had something else in mind, another kind of message. I leaned in close and said, “Kyle Craig did this to you.” I wanted him to know, and maybe pay Kyle back someday.

Maybe with zamochit.

Chapter 115

Chapter 115

I HOPED TO GOD it was over now. We all did. Ned Mahoney flew back to Quantico that morning, but I spent the rest of the day at FBI headquarters in lower Manhattan. The Russian government had filed protests everywhere they could, but Andrei Prokopev was still in custody, and State Department people were all over the FBI offices. Even a few Wall Street firms had questioned the arrest.

So far, I hadn’t been allowed to talk to the Russian again. He was scheduled for surgery, but his life wasn’t in danger. He was being grilled by someone, just not by me.

Burns finally reached me at around four o’clock in the office I was using at FBI New York. “Alex, I want you to head back to Washington,” he said. “Flight arrangements have been made. We’ll be waiting for you here.” That was all he told me.